It’s 9pm on May 31st 1916, and the Battle of Jutland has raged for the last six hours.
With more than 200 ships involved, it has been the largest clash between fleets of battleships
in history.
As the light now begins to fail and darkness sets in, both sides stumble back towards each
other, struggling to tell friend from foe, and heading towards one of the most chaotic
engagements in naval history.
-
- When the Battle of Jutland began in the early
afternoon, it initially went very well for the German side.
The vanguard of Rear Admiral Hipper’s battlecruiser squadron managed to engage their opposite
numbers under David Beatty with a small numerical disadvantage, and inflict heavy blows.
Two British battlecruisers suffered catastrophic explosions, and Beatty was drawn into a ‘run
to the south’ towards the advancing main body of the German High Seas Fleet.
But when Beatty’s force turned back to the north, it led the Germans straight to the
larger and more powerful British Grand Fleet, which was deploying under Admiral John Jellicoe.
In the resulting fleet engagement in the late afternoon and evening, the British gained
the upper hand, using their superior numbers and positioning to pummel the German battlecruisers
and leading battleships and force Admiral Scheer to break off the battle.
As the Germans disengaged, and the light began to fade, there were sporadic engagements between
the two fleets, the last of which was between Beatty and the lead ships of the opposing
line.
From 9.20 , his battlecruisers fired on Hipper’s battered ships, which were silhouetted against
the still-light western sky.
Suffering hits and unable to see what was shooting at them due to the rapidly descending
darkness, first Hipper and then Rear Admiral Meurer’s pre dreadnoughts broke off to the
west.
This engagement, the last to take place in daylight, underlined the German battlefleet’s
precarious position.
It was now badly outnumbered, and a number of capital ships were severely damaged.
Admiral Scheer knew that if battle was resumed at daybreak, his fleet would be torn to shreds.
The High Seas Fleet had to disengage, but faced the slight problem that between it and
Wilhelmshaven was the entire Grand Fleet.
Guessing that Admiral Jellicoe would continue steaming south to try and cut the him off,
Scheer decided instead to turn to the south-east, to take the shortest route home, even if that
meant ploughing through the middle of the grand fleet in the pitch dark.
At 10.10pm, Admiral Scheer ordered a speed of 16 knots and re ordered his battle line.
The four Rheinland class battleships would take the lead, with the shattered battlecruisers
of Vice Admiral Hipper’s 1st Scouting Group sent to the rear, behind the squadron of pre
dreadnoughts.
Meanwhile, Admiral Jellicoe’s fleet was taking up a night cruising formation, not
expecting the resumption of fighting before daybreak.
His battleships would be in three parallel columns, though in practice the divisions
led by Barham and Marlborough would fall further behind due to battle damage.
After the battering Scheer had taken before sunset, Jellicoe did not think the German
admiral would again try to punch straight through the British fleet, and was more worried
about the threat of torpedo attacks.
To ward these off, all of the Grand Fleet’s 58 destroyers would be arranged to the stern
of the fleet.
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- As the two fleets maneuvered into their new
formations in the dark, confusion reigned over who was who and where exactly they were.
At 11.15pm, the 2nd Light Cruiser squadron under Commodore William Goodenough suddenly
found unknown ships on its starboard side just 800 yards away . After a few moments
of uncertainty, HMS Dublin decided they could not possibly be British and opened fire . Almost
immediately, both lines of ships turned on their searchlights and a furious exchange
of fire began.
The German ships, the 4th scouting group under rear admiral Reuter had better night fighting
technology and training, and gained the upper hand in the gun battle, inflicting multiple
hits on Southampton . But the British struck back with a torpedo launched from Goodenough’s
flagship , which hit the light cruiser Frauenlob and cut her in half.
The German ships did not stop or turn to engage , being under strict instructions to maintain
their south-easterly course, and they soon faded back into the darkness.
Frauenlob meanwhile sank quickly, taking all 320 men onboard with her . Southampton for
her part had lost several dozen men as casualties and suffered damage to her communications
equipment, meaning Goodenough could not inform Admiral Jellicoe about the engagement.
Though the British officers would not have known it, this was just the first brief skirmish
in what would be a torrid next five hours, as the main p art of the High Seas Fleet approached.
The most western of the British destroyer forces that night was the 4th flotilla, with
12 ships under Captain John Wintour.
At 12.03, Wintour’s flagship Tipperary spotted unknown ships approaching from the west . Wintour
initially believed they could be British , and waited until they were just 700 yards away
before flashing a signal at the interlopers.
The response was a barrage of searchlights, revealing the capital ships Westfalen, Nassau
and Rheinland, which all opened fire.
At this kind of point blank range, Tipperary stood no chance.
Within moments it was ablaze, with large amounts of its crew dead or wounded.
The other destroyers of 4th flotilla had to swerve to avoid their burning leader, firing
away with their 4inch guns against the superstructure of the approaching battleships.
They also launched torpedoes , which the capital ships saw and turned away to avoid.
The escorting light cruisers of the 2nd scouting group did likewise, trying to slip through
the gaps between the heavy ships.
But Elbing misjudged its course, and disaster struck as it was rammed by Posen, flooding
both of the light cruisers engine rooms and leaving it adrift.
Seeing t he front of his line turning south, Admiral Scheer was quick to signal Westfalen
and tell it no uncertain terms to get back on their original course, torpedoes or no
torpedoes.
The German admiral knew that nothing could be allowed to delay his fleets progress even
for a moment, or they risked disaster.
As the capital ships turned back, the destroyer HMS Spitfire appeared, trying to reach the
blazing wreck of Tipperary to rescue survivors.
Spotted at point blank range, with no time to avoid any further torpedoes, the 20,000
ton battleship Nassau turned sharply out of line and rammed t he 1000 ton Spitfire, before
firing its main guns and blowing away much of the destroyers superstructure.
Spitfire slid away to stern and soon vanished- but remarkably, did not sink and made it eventually
back to port in the UK.
With the battleships now again steering to the south east, it was not long before they
again ran into the 4th flotilla, which had now reformed behind HMS Broke.
At 12.40, Broke spotted the shadows of heavy ships moving across them from the west.
Just like Tipperary before him, Broke’s captain was uncertain whether or not these
were British or German.
A recognition signal was flashed, and the response as before was a barrage of fire at
less than a thousand yards by German cruisers and battleships.
In less than a minute Broke was smashed to bits, with the entire bridge crew killed and
the steering jammed hard over to port.
Immediately behind it, Sparrowhawk swerved but was unable to avoid the out of control
destroyer, which rammed it at high speed.
The collision was so violent, it threw 23 men onto Broke’s deck from sparrowhawk,
and locked the two ships together.
Both ships believed they were sinking and began to evacuate to each other, before a
completely unsighted HMS Contest appeared and was unable to avoid the ships in front
of it.
The newcomer sliced into sparrowhawk’s stern, cutting it clean off before staggering away
to the south.
Behind this group a series of destroyers had done their best against the german ships,
managing to hit and severely damage the cruiser rostock, and force the battleships away again
with torpedoes.
Scheer dispatched another terse signal from his flagship in the middle of the line, ordering
the ships at the front once again to ‘maintain the course’.
Compelled to turn again back to the south east, the battleships soon plowed again into
the remnants of 4th flotilla.
In a further engagement at very close range the destroyer Fortune was sunk, before the
arrival of an unknown in between the two sides.
It was the British cruiser Black prince, which had been separated from the other ships in
its formation for some hours in the chaos of battle, and was trying to make its way
back to the British fleet.
Her crew spotted the outlines of heavy ships around 1am, and believing it to be the rear
of the grand fleet, moved to take up station alongside it.
It was spotted by Thuringen and Nassau, and when the ship failed to respond to a german
signal, searchlights were snapped on and Black prince was blown away at point blank range
in a matter of minutes.
All 900 men onboard went down with their ship.
Minutes later, the destroyer Ardent, separated from her flotilla ran into the head of the
german line and was similarly dispatched, with just 2 survivors.
Over the course of just over an hour of intense fighting, the 4th destroyer flotilla had virtually
ceased to exist, with 4 ships sunk, 3 heavily damaged and the remainder scattered in the
darkness.
All of this fighting had occurred very close to the rear of the British leet, but remarkably
none of the battleships intervened, and none of them told Jellicoe what was going on.
And so the destroyers were left to face battleships twenty times their size alone.
After cutting through 4th flotilla the german battlefleet continued on its south easterly
course towards the horns reef.
At 2am, they approached unseen a group of five destroyers led by Commander Goldsmith
in Lydiard, who believed that the ships firing at 4th flotilla had in fact been British and
this had been a tragic friendly fire incident.
He therefore increased his speed and decided to take his flotilla across the bows of the
approaching heavy ships – which he believed to be led by Barham – and take up station
on their starboard side as had been instructed.
What Goldsmith didn’t know though, was that his line of five had in fact grown to 12 as
stragglers from other flotillas had followed on behind his ships in all the chaos.
This meant that when his line crossed the bows of what was in fact the battleship Westfalen,
ten of them made it, and two did not- with Petard and Turbulent having to swerve to avoid
the very much german battleships looming out of the darkness.
Petard managed to escape with damage, but Turbulent was sunk.
There was one last major engagement an hour later, when the British 12th flotilla under
Captain Stirling approached and engaged the rear of the german battleships as the first
signs of dawn approached.
Torpedoes were launched, and the battleships turned away once again, but this time one
of them was not quick enough.
One torpedo struck the pre dreadnought pommern, causing a detonation of the ships magazine
in a huge explosion that claimed the ship and all 840 of her crew.
- When dawn broke on June 1st, the German fleet
had escaped.
Admiral Scheer had managed to punch through the British destroyer flotillas and was now
not far from safety at the horns reef.
Jellicoe had continued to take his battlefleet south, oblivious to what had happened behind
him and with no idea of the course or location of Scheer’s fleet.
The overnight battles had been chaotic and brutal.
Both sides had lost more than a thousand dead, concentrated in the devastating sinkings of
Pommern, Frauenlob and Black Prince.
Throughout June 1st Admiral Jellicoe remained at sea, rounding up straggling ships and trying
to get a sense of the damage that his enormous fleet had suffered in the previous days fighting.
The High Seas Fleet reached port in the afternoon, whereupon it immediately declared that a great
victory had been won in ‘the battle of the skaggerak’.
The battle of Jutland might have been over, but the battle to claim victory in it was
just beginning.